December 23, 2016

COAM (Colegio Oficial de Arquitectos de Madrid) organized the exhibition and lecture by architect Winy Maas, who reviewed the ten years of life of The Why Factory, a research and education institute about the city of the future.

The Why Factory is research and education institute, belonging to the Faculty of Architecture of the Delft University of Technology, and led by professor Winy Maas, founding partner of MVRDV, that focuses in the development of our cities.

Practical information

The ‘The Why Factory: Research, Education and Public Engagement (2006 – 2016)’ will open on December 15 at COAM. The exhibition can be visited for free until January 30th. On the same day, at 7:00 pm, Winy Maas will give the lecture ‘What’s Next?’ at the COAM Auditorium. He will present the work of The Why Factory, a global think-tank that aims to analyse, theorize and construct future cities.

Some of the most outstanding works of MVRDV are the Dutch Pavilion at the Hannover Expo 2000, the Silodam building in Amsterdam, Markthal in Rotterdam or their proposal for the future of Paris Grand Paris Plus Petit. The Dutch architect and professor believes that “the future demands lots of knowledge to inform and inspire others”, and assures that “there is so much to do to make our future good. More funding is needed to do research and to produce visualisations on future mobility, future democracies, future economies, future healthiness, etc. And more funding is needed to share this work with the world and make it accessible to all”.

The exhibition is organized around nine claims around which the activity of The Why Factory has evolved during the last ten years: the need for new leadership in urbanism and architecture in Visionary Cities; the wish for common sense in a world that seems to be dominated by individualism in (W)ego City; the advocacy for wildlife in Biodivercity; the claim for openness in Porocity; the desire for amazement in We Want World Wonders; the hope and need for acceleration of the green agenda in Green Dream; the push for the combination of small scale in densification actions in The Vertical Village; the exploration of radical trend breaks and their effects in City Shock; the excitement and amazement of the new material changes in Barba; the expression of fear of the ultimately killing Absolute Leisure; and soon Copy Paste, a pamphlet for referencing and development…

The work of The Why Factory is a somehow strange phenomenon in scientific research -design research-, which is commonly regarded as a “un-scientific” method. We use design research as a tool for innovation. It is a process of trial and error, where the goal is sometimes unclear and the end is open, but which leads to an exciting journey with a potentially spectacular outcome. Maybe it can be regarded as a true combination of science and fiction…

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